An efficient data hiding method based on adaptive directional pixel value differencing (ADPVD)

Abstract

Steganography is an important secret information communication technology in which one may send messages without others having knowledge of their existence. This paper proposes a new adaptive steganography method for color images using adaptive directional pixel-value differencing (ADPVD). The proposed method increases the capacity of the hidden secret data and improves the security of the stego-color image as well. The hiding capacity of the original PVD method is investigated by considering three directional edges: horizontal, vertical and diagonal directions using color cover image. The cover image is partitioned into 2-pixel blocks in a non-overlapping fashion and scanned in raster-scan order in all three directions. The proposed method adaptively selects the appropriate embedding directions for each color channel according to the largest embedding capacity. The security is improved since different pixel directions are employed adaptively to embed different number of message bits in each color channel. The experimental results show that the proposed method provides both larger embedding capacity and better visual quality of the stego color image compared with other PVD-based algorithms.